


A Hospital Room in 1984

by CircusEpidemic



Category: Psychonauts (Video Games)
Genre: Giving Up, Mental Decline, Mental Institutions, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, psych wards in the 80s werent very good, psychiatric institutionalization, references to medical abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-24
Updated: 2019-03-24
Packaged: 2019-11-29 04:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18218132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CircusEpidemic/pseuds/CircusEpidemic
Summary: A story about Crispin, mostly focused on what happened before Crispin fucked with Fred's ego.





	A Hospital Room in 1984

“Good morning,” A doctor said as he entered the room, “so, Whytehead is it?”

“ _You’re_ the ones with the records.”

“Just answer the question.” Crispin groaned and sat up in the chair.

“Yes.” The doctor nodded and closed the door.

“So, do you know why you are here?”

“You tell me.” Crispin rolled his eyes, he knew exactly why he was here and he didn't want to be.

“You attempted suicide.”

“It wasn’t on purpose.” The doctor paused hearing this.

“You can’t just bleed that much accidentally.”

“It wasn’t an accident, but it wasn’t on purpose either.” The doctor didn’t respond to this, he just opened up his binder and wrote something down. As expected.

“When was your last medical visit?”

“God...” Crispin rubbed his eyes, he couldn’t remember. “Shouldn’t _you_ know this?”

“I’m asking to see if you remember.”

“Well I don’t.” More Writing. Crispin felt itchy, he felt like hell. “When do I get to go home?”

“You won’t be.” Crispin was taken aback.

“W-What do you _mean_ I won’t be going home?”

“When fixing up the wound that sent you here, we noticed other injuries on your body. They seemed to be self inflicted.”

“How the fuck do you know that?” Crispin was starting to get angry.

“We’re doctors, we’ve seen scars like that before.” The doctor took a piece of paper out of his binder and slid it across the table, “please sign this.” Crispin stared at it in silence.

“Why the fuck should I sign this?”

“We need you to sign it.” Crispin stared at the doctor before returning his eyes to the paper. He felt itchy all over and his head started hurting, he took off his glasses and started to rub his eyes. “Are you alright sir?”

“Do I look fucking alright to you?” He couldn’t process any part of this, he slammed his head onto the table. As he slowly raised his head back up he could see the doctor take a step back towards the door. “Can I not sign this?” He asked meekly.

The doctors silence was deafening.

 

 

* * *

 

On just his first week at the asylum, Crispin had to be restrained. He couldn’t stop scratching himself, biting himself, and doing whatever else he could at injuring himself. He needed some kind of distraction from this hell. Even if he didn’t want to be hurt in anyway, he just felt that he had to, the only way to distract himself. The strait-jacket was supposed to be a humane way to contain inmates, but too many people at the Thorney Towers institute were in them. The moment an orderly noticed a patient acting in anyway that could be seen as violent that was their go to option. The institute wasn’t known for hiring those best suited for being around the ill.

 

Two months in and Crispin could only feel his mental health decline. He didn’t need to be, and he could tell some others didn’t. Some of the patients had been some kind of psychic powers, Crispin usually didn’t believe any of that nonsense but there was no other explanation for the stuff some of that happened. The people didn’t seem to realize they were psychic, the ward didn’t seem to tell them, or maybe they didn’t know either. Either way Crispin knew and he also knew that if they knew they could get actual help, not being stuck not knowing what is happening in their brain. This place clearly didn’t help anyone.

 

Over a year in Crispin had given up fighting. This place was making him worse, the only way to get out was either to die or pretend you were getting better just to leave, and Crispin had no energy left to do the latter. He tried to get other inmates to hurt him in some way, but all of them refused. They knew they would get punished for hurting others, so would they? Eventually Crispin just stopped trying, he stopped doing anything, he did as little as possible. There was no point, He wasn’t getting better like this.

 

Eventually Crispin forgot why he was even sent here.

 

 

* * *

  
Sometime in the future a new orderly arrived, some kind of goody two shoes who thought he could handle the people here. Crispin knew better, he knew nobody that young could handle this, he’s seen people try before countless times. They all failed. Even after getting promoted to chief orderly Crispin still knew he would cave in. They all do.

One day the orderly barged into Crispin’s room and tried to “get to know” him. Crispin refused to speak, it didn’t matter, he was doomed here, but the orderly would not stop trying to get him to talk. Day after day it was like this, the orderly barging into Crispin’s room to try and get him to do something. It never worked.

 

“Hey Crispin!” The orderly opened the door, Crispin didn’t even move to look at him, laying on the ground staring at a wall. “Guess what I have in store today!” Probably some dumb puzzle or other boring activity. “Have I ever told you that I’m related to Napoleon Bonaparte?”

Crispin sat up and turned to him, utterly confused. “ Yeah! It’s really weird to talk about, everytime I tell people my name they ask ‘wait do mean Bonaparte as in Napoleon Bonaparte?‘ and I just awkwardly say ‘yeah he’s related to me on my dad’s side‘ which confuses people a lot because...” the orderly continued rambling and it only confused Crispin more, what the fuck was this guy talking about?

“W-” The orderly stopped talking, “what... do you have planned... Bonaparte?” He stared at Crispin for a while before getting really excited.

“Oh! Yeah!” He walked out of the room and quickly came back in with a board game box. “Waterloo-o! As a person related to Napoleon I feel like I kinda have to be good at this game.” He chuckled, “Also you can just call me Fred!”

“...What is this game?”

“Well the only way I’ll tell you is if you play with me!”

“... I’m in.”

Fred brought Crispin into a main area, and set up the game. “So do you want me to explain everything to you or just the important stuff and explain the rest later?”

“Explain all of it.”

“Well if you insist, you should probably sit down, this is gonna take a while!”

 

 

 

In the end he was right.


End file.
